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[From iJie Southern Literary Messenger, December, 1858. | 

IS WWi CONSISTENT WITH NATOML LAW? 

An Address delivered before the Virginia State Agricultural Society, at thh 
Sixth Annual Exhibition, at Petersburg, 4th November, 1858. 



BY JAMES P. HOLCOMBE. 



Mr. President, and 

Gentlemen of the Agrktdtural Society: 
It seems to me eminently proper, to 
connect with these imposing exhibitions 
of the trophies of your agricultural skill, 
a discussion of the whole bearings and 
relations, jural, moral, social, and eco- 
nomical, of that peculiar industrial sys- 
tem to which we are so largely indebted 
for the results that have awakened our 
pride and gratification. No class in the 
community has so many and such large 
interests gathered up in the safety and 
permanence of that system, as the Far- 
mers of the State. The main-wheel and 
spring of your material prosperity, inter- 
woven with the entire texture of your 
social life, underlying the very founda- 
tions of the public strength and renown, 
to lay upon it any rash liand would put 
in peril whatever you value ; the security 
of your property, the peace of your so- 
ciety, the well-being — if not the exist- 
ence of that dependent race which Pro- 
vidence has committed to your guardian- 
ship — the stability of your government, 
the preservation in your midst of union, 
liberty, and civilization. By the intro- 
duction of elements of such inexpressi- 
ble magnitude, the politics of our coun- 
try have been invested with the grandeur 
and significance which belong to those 
great struggles upon which depend the 



destinies of nations. The mad outbreaks 
of popular passion, the rapid spread of 
anarchical opinions, the mournful decay 
of ancient patriotism, the wide disruption 
of Christian unity, which have marked 
the progress, and disclosed the power, 
purpose and spirit of this agitation, come 
home to your business and bosoms with 
impressive emphasis of warning and in- 
struction. No pause in a strife around 
which cluster all the hopes and fears of 
freemen, can give any earnest of endur- 
ing peace, until the principles of law and 
order which cover with sustaining sanc- 
tion all the relations of our society, have 
obtained their rightful ascendency over 
the reason and conscience of the Christian 
world. 

The most instructive chapters in history 
are those of opinions. The decisive bat- 
tle-fields of the world, furnish but vulgar 
and deceptive indices of human progresa. 
Its true eras are marked by transitions of 
sentiment and opinion. Those invisible 
moral forces that emanate from the minds 
of the great thinkers of the race, rule the 
courses of history. The recent awaken- 
ing of our Southern mind upon the ques- 
tion of African Slavery, has been fol- 
lowed by a victory of peace, which we 
trust, will embrace within its beneficent 
influence generations and empires yet un- 
born. Such was the strength of anti- 



Is Slavery Consistent with Natural Late ? 



slavery feeling within our own borders, 
that scarcely a quarter of a century has 
elapsed since an Act of Emancipation 
■was almost consummated, under the aus- 
pices of our most intelligent and patriotic 
citizens; a measure which probably all 
would now admit bore in its womb ele- 
ments of private distress and public 
calamity, that must have impressed upon 
our history, through ages of expanding 
desolation, the lines of fire and blood. 
But 

"Whirlwinds fitliest scatter pestilence." 

Nothing less than an extremity of peril 
could have induced a general revision of 
long-standing opinions, intrenched in 
formidable prejudices, and sanctioned by 
the most venerable authority. Slavery 
•was explored, for the first time, with 
the forward and reverted eye of true 
statesmanship, under all the lights of 
history — of social and political philoso- 
phy — of natural and Divine law. Public 
sentiment rapidly changed its face. Every 
year of controversy has encouraged the 
advocates of " discountenanced truth" by 
the fresh accessions it has brought to 
their numbers, whilst no desertions have 
thinned the enlarging ranks. The cele- 
brated declaration of Mr. Jefferson, that 
he knew no attribute of the Almighty 
which would take the side of the master 
in a contest with his slave, is so far from 
commanding the assent of the intelligent 
slaveholders of this generation, that the 
justice, the humanity, and the policy of 
the relation as it exists with us, has be- 
come the prevailing conviction of our peo- 
ple. Public honours, and gratitude, are the 
fitting meed of the statesmen, whether liv- 
ing or dead, (and amongst them I recall no 
names more eminent than those associated 
with the proudest traditions of this hospi- 
table and patriotic city, Leigh, Gholson, 
and Brown,) who threw themselves into 
this imminent and deadly breacli, and 
grappling with an uninformed and unre- 
flecting sentiment, delivered the common- 
wealth, when in the very jaws of death, 
from moral, social and political ruin. 
Permit me to premise some words of 
explanation as to the meaning and extent 



of the subject upon which I have been 
invited to address this meeting. It pre- 
sents no question of municipal or inter- 
national law. It raises no inquiry as to 
the rightfulness of the means by which 
slavery Avas introduced into this conti- 
nent, nor into the nature of the legal sanc- 
tion.s under which it now exists. There 
can be no doubt that slavery, for more 
than a century after it was established in 
the English colonies, was in entire har- 
mony with the Common Law, as it was 
expounded by the highest judicial au- 
thorities, and with the principles of the 
Law of Nations, and of Natural Law as 
laid down in the writings of the most 
eminent publicists. At the commence- 
ment of our Revolution men were living 
who remembered the Treaty of Utrecht, by 
which, in the language of Lord Brougham, 
all the glories of Bamillies and Blenheim 
were bartered for a larger share in the lu- 
crative commerce of the slave trade. But 
whatever may be our present opinions upon 
these subjects, the black race now consti- 
tutes an integral part of our community, as 
much so as the white, and the authority of 
the State to adjust their mutual relations 
can in no manner depend upon the method 
by which either was brought within its 
jurisdiction. The State in every age must 
provide a constitution and laws, if it does 
not find them in existence, adapted to its 
special wants and circumstances. Afri- 
can Slavery in the United States is con- 
sistent with Natural Law, because if all 
the bonds of public authority were sud- 
denly dissolved, and the community called 
upon to reconstruct its social and political 
system, the relations of the two races re- 
maining in other respects unaltered, it 
would be our right and duty to reduce 
the negro to subjection. To the phrase 
Natural Law, I shall attach in this dis- 
cussion the signification in which it is 
generally used, and consider it as synony- 
mous with justice; not that imperfect 
justice which may be discerned by the 
savage mind, but those ethical rules, or 
principles of right, which, upon the 
grounds of their own fitness and pro- 
priety, and irrespective of the sanction 
of Divine authority, commend themselves 
to the most cultivated human reason. 



Is Slavery Consistent tcWi Natural Lata? 



Slavery we may define, so as to embrace 
all the elements that properly belong to 
it, as a condition or relation in -which one 
man is charged -with the protection and 
support of another, and invested with an 
absolute property in his labour, and such 
a degree of authority over his person as 
may be requisite to enforce its enjoyment. 
It is a form of involuntary restraint, ex- 
tending to the personal as well as politi- 
cal liberty of the subject. The slave has 
sometimes, as at one period under the 
Roman jurisprudence, been reduced to a 
mere chattel, the power of the master 
over the person of the slave being as 
absolute as his property in his labour. 
•^ This harsh and unnatural feature has 
never deformed the relation in any Chris- 
-tain country. In the United States the 
double character of the slave, as a moral 
person and as a subject of property, has 
been universally acknowledged, and to a 
greater or less degree protected, both by 
public sentiment and by the law of the 
land. It furnishes a key to the under- 
standing of one of the most celebrated 
clauses in our Federal Constitution, as all 
know who are familiar with the luminous 
exposition, given by Mr. Madison in the 
Federalist, of its origin and meaning. In 
our own State, amongst other proofs of 
its recognition, we may point to the pri- 
vilege conferred upon the master of eman- 
cipating his slave, and to the obligation 
imposed upon him of providing for his 
support when old, infirm, or insane ; to 
the enactments which punish injuries to 
the slave, whether from a master or stran- 
ger, as offences of the same nature as if 
inflicted upon a white person, and to the 
construction placed by our courts upon 
the general language of criminal statutes, 
by which the slave, as a person, has been 
embraced within the range of their pro- 
tection ; to the regulations for the trial of 
slaves charged with the commission of 
crime, which, whilst they exact the re- 
sponsibilities of moral agents, temper the 
administration of justice with mercy, and 
to the exemption from labour on the 
Lord's Day, an exemption which is shown 
by the provision for the Christian slave of 
a Jewish master, to have been established 
as a security for a right of conscience. 



Indeed, he scarcely labours under any 
personal disability, to which we may not 
find a counterpart, in those which attach 
to other incompetent classes — the minor, 
the lunatic, and the married woman. 
The statement of my subject presup- 
poses the existence of the State. It thus 
assumes that there are involuntary re- 
straints which may be rightfully impos- 
ed upon men, for the State itself is but 
the sum and expression of innumerable 
forms of restraint by which the life, lib- 
erty, and faculties of individuals are 
placed under the control of an authority 
independent of their volition ? The 
truth that the selfishness of human na- 
ture, forces upon us the necessity of sub- 
mitting to the discipline of law, or living 
in the license of anarchy, is too obvious 
to have required any argument in its 
support, in this presence. Until man be- 
comes a law unto himself, society through »X 
a political organization must supply his 
want of self-control. Whether it may 
establish such a form of restraint, as 
personal slavery, cannot be determined 
until the principles upon which its au- 
thority should be exercised, have been 
settled, and the boundaries traced be- 
tween private right and public power. 
The authority of the State must be com- 
mensurate with the objects for which it 
was established. Its function is, to re- 
concile the conflicting rights, and oppos- 
ing interests, and jarring passions of in- 
dividuals, so as to secure the general 
peace and progress. It proceeds upon 
the postulate, that societyis our state of 
nature, and that men by the primary law 
of their being, are bound to live and perfect 
themselves in fellowship with each other. 
As God does not ordain contradictory 
and therefore impossible things, men 
can derive no rights from him which are 
inconsistent with the duration and per- 
fection of society. The rights of the 
individual are not such as would belong 
to him, if he stood upon the earth like 
Campbell's imaginary "Last Man," 
amidst unbroken solitude, but such only 
as when balanced with the equal rights 
of other men, may be accorded to each, 
without injury to the rest. The neces- 
sities of social existence, then, not in the 



Is Slavery Consistent loitTi Natural Law? 



rudeness of the savage state, but under 
those complex and refined forms which 
have been developed by Christian civili- 
zation, constitute a horizon by which the 
unbounded liberty of nature is spanned 
and circumscribed. 

This is no theory of social absolutism. 
It does not make society the source of 
our rights, which therefore might be con- 
ferred or withheld at its caprice or dis- 
cretion, but it does regard the just wants 
of society, as the measure and practical 
expression of their extent. It is no re- 
production of the exploded error of the 
ancient statesmen, who inverting the 
natural relations of the parties, consid- 
ered the aggrandizement of the State, 
without reference to the units of which 
it was composed, as the end of social 
union. The State was made for man, 
and not man for the State, but the coop- 
eration of the State is yet so necessary 
to the perfection of his nature, that his 
interests require the renunciation of any 
claim inconsistent with its existence, or 
its value as an agency of civilization. It 
invades no province sacred to the indi- 
vidual, because the Divine Being who 
has rendered government a necessity, has 
made it a universal blessing, by ordain- 
ing a preestablished harmony between 
the welfare of the individual and tlie re- 
straints which are requisite to the well- 
being of society. 

Unless there is some fatal flaw in this 
reasoning, men have no rights wliich 
cannot be reconciled with the possession 
of a restraining power by the State, 
large enough to embrace every variety 
of injustice and oppression, for which 
society may furnish the occasion or the 
opportunity. The social union brings 
with it dangers and temptations, as well 
as blessings and pleasures— and men can- 
not fulfil the law and purpose of their 
being, unless the State has authority to 
^ protect the community from the tumul- 
tuous and outbreaking passions of its 
members, and to protect individuals as 
far as it can be accomplished without 
prejudice to the community from the 
consequences of their own incompetence, 
improvidence and folly. Such are the 
natural differences between men in char- 



acter and capacity, that without a steady 
and judicious effort by the State to re- 
dress the balance of privilege and oppor- 
tunity which these inequalities constantly 
derange, the rich must grow richer, and 
the poor poorer, until even anarchy would 
be a relief to the masses, from the suffer- 
ing and oppression of societ3^ Owing 
likewise to this variety of condition, and 
of moral and intellectual endowment, it 
is impossible to prescribe any stereotype 
forms admitting of universal application, 
under which the restraining discipline of 
law should be exercised. The ends of 
social union remain the same through all 
ages, but the means of realizing those 
ends must be adapted to successive 
stages of advancement, and change with 
the varying, intelligence and virtue of in- 
dividuals, and classes, and races, and 
the local circumstances of different coun- 
tries. The object being supreme in im- 
portance must carry with it as an inci- 
dent, the right to employ the means 
which may be requisite to its attainment. 
The individual must yield property, lib- 
erty, life itself when necessary to pre- 
serve the life, as it were, of the collec- 
tive humanity. To these principles, every 
enlightened government in the world, 
conforms its practice, protecting men not 
only from each other, but from themselves, 
graduating its restraints according to the 
character of the subject, and multiplying 
them with the increase of society in 
wealth, population and refinement. We 
cannot look into English or American 
jurisprudence without discovering innu- 
merable forms of restraint upon rights 
of persons as well as rights of pro- 
perty, as in that absolute subordi- 
nation of all personal rights to the gen- 
eral welfare, which lies at the foundation 
of the law for the public defence, the 
law to punish crimes, and the law to sup- 
press vagrancy: or in those qualified re- 
straints by which the administration of 
justice between individuals, has been 
sometimes enforced, as in imprisonment 
for debt : or in that partial and tempora- 
ry subjection of one person to the con- 
trol of another, either for the benefit of 
the former, or upon grounds of pub- 
lic policy, presented in the law of 



Is Slavery Consistent icilh Natural Late? 



parent and child, guardian and ward, 
master and apprentice, lunatic and com- 
mittee, husband and •wife, officer and sol- 
diers (if the army, captain and mariners 
of the ship. Whether we proceed in 
search of a general principle, which may 
ascertain the extent of the public authority 
byacourse of inductive reasoning, or by an 
observation of the practice of civilized 
communities, we reach the same conclu- 
sion. The State must possess the power 
of imposing any restraint without regard 
to its form, which can be shown by an 
<i enlarged view of social expediency, or 
upon an indulgent consideration for hu- 
man infirmity, to be beneficial to its sub- 
ject, or necessary to the general well-being. 
In the legislation of Congress for the 
Indian tribes within our territory, and in 
that of Great Britain for the alien and 
dependent nations under her jurisdiction, 
we see how the public authority, as flexi- 
ble as comprehensive in its grasp, accom- 
modates itself to the weakness and infir- 
mity of races, as well as of individuals. 
Upon what principles is the British gov- 
ernment administered in the East? In 
1833, on the application of the East ludia 
Company for a renewal of its charter, 
they were explained and defended by 
Macaulay in a speech which would have 
delighted Burke, as much by its practi- 
cal wisdom, as its glittering i-hetorio. An 
immense society was placed under the 
almost despotic rule of a few strangers. 
No securities were provided for liberty or 
property, which an Euglisman would 
have valued. This system of servitude 
I was vindicated, not on the grounds of ab- 
stract propriety, but of its adaptation to 
the wants and circumstances of those 
upon whom it was imposed. India, it 
was urged, constituted a vast exception 
to all those general rules of political sci- 
ence which might be deduced from the 
experience of Europe. Her population 
was disqualified by character and habit, 
for the rights and privileges of British 
1 freemen. In their moral and sociixl ame- 
lioration, under British rule, was to be 
found the best proof of its justice and 
policy. It was a despotism no doubt, but 
it was a mild and paternal one; ani no 
form of restraint less stringent could be 



substituted with equal advantage to those 
upon whom it was to operate. It has of- 
ten occurred to me in reading those fervid 
declamations upon Southern slavery, with 
which this great orator has inflamed 
the sensibilities of the British public, that 
his lessons of sober and practical states- 
manship, from which no Englisli ministry 
has ever departed, might be turned with 
irresistible recoil upon their author. Was 
American slavery introduced b}^ wrong 
and violence? India was "stripped of 
her plumed and jewelled turban," by ra- 
pine and injustice. Are the relations of 
England to India, so anomalous that it 
would be unsafe to accept generalizations 
drawn from the experience of other com- 
munities? History might be interroga- 
ted in vain, for a parallel to the condition 
of our Southern society. Are the Hin- 
doos unfit for liberty ? Not more so than 
the African. Is despotism necessary in 
India, because it is problematical whether 
crime could be repressed, or social order 
preserved undermore liberal institutions? 
The danger of license and anarchy would 
be far more imminent, from an emanci- 
pation of our slaves. If the statesman 
despairs of making brick without straw 
in the East, can he expect to find the pro- 
blem easier in the West ? Has the Hin- 
doo improved in arts and morals under 
the beneficent sway of his British mas- 
ter ? In the transformation of the Afri- 
can savage into the Christian slave, the 
relative advance has been immeasurably 
greater. The truth is, that the principles 
which lie at the foundation of all politi- 
cal restraint, may make it the duty of the V 
State under certain circumstances, to es- 
tablish the relation of personal servitude. 
All forms of restraint involve the exer- 
cise of power over the individual without 
his consent. All are inconsistent with 
any theory of natural right which claims 
for man, a larger measure of liberty than 
can be reconciled with the peace and pro- 
gress of the society in which he lives. 
All operate harshly at times upon indi- 
viduals. All are reflections upon human 
nature, and alike wrong in the abstract. 
Any is right in the- concrete, when neces- 
sary to the welfare of the community in 
which it exists, or beneficial to the sub- 



Is Slavery Consistent iciih Natural Laiv ? 



ject upon whom it is imposed. If society 
may establish the institution of private 
property, involving restrictions by which 
the majority of mankind are shut out 
from all access to that great domain which 
the author of nature has stocked with the 
means of subsistence for his children, 
and justify a restraint so Comprehensive 
and onerous, by its tendency to promote 
civilization ; if it may discriminate be- 
tween classes and individuals, and appor- 
tion to some a larger measure of political 
liberty than it does to others; if it may 
take away life, liberty or property when 
demanded by the public good : if, as in 
various personal relations, it may protect 
the helpless and incompetent, by placing 
them under a guardianship proportioned 
in the term and extent of its authority to 
the degree and duration of the infirmity; 
why if a commensurate necessity arises, 
S and the same great ends are to be accom- 
plished, is its claim to impose upon an infe- 
rior race the degree of personal restraint 
which may be requisite to coerce and di- 
rect its labour, to be treated as a usurpa- 
tion ? The authority of the State under 
proper circumstances to establish a sys- 
tem of slavery, is one question ; the ex- 
istence of those circumstances, or the ex- 
pediency of such legislation is another 
and entirely distinct question. No doubt 
^ a much smaller capacity for self-control, 
and a much lower degree of Intelligence 
must concur, to justify personal slavery, 
than would be sufficient to impart validi- 
ty to other forms of subordination. No 
doubt the public authority upon this as 
upon every other subject, may be abused 
by the selfish passions and interests of 
men. Byt once acknowledge the right of 
society to establish a government of pains 
and penalties, for the protection of the 
individual and the promotion of the gen- 
eral welfare, then unless it can be shown 
that slavery can in no instance be neces- 
sary to the well being of the community, 
or conducive to the happiness of the sub- 
ject, (a proposition which is inconsistent 
j with the admission of all respectable 

British and American abolitionists that 
any plan of emancipation in the Southern 
States, should be gradual and not imme- 
diate;) once make this fundamental con- 



cession, and the rightfulness of slavery, 
like that of every other form of restraint, 
becomes a question of time, place, men 
and circumstances. 

The people of the United States ac- 
cepting without much reflection, those 
expositions of human rights embodied in 
the infidel philosophy of France, and glow- 
ing with that generous enthusiasm to 
communicate the blessings of liberty 
which is always inspired by its posses- 
sion, have been disposed to look with com- 
mon aversion upon all forms of unequal 
restraint. Ravished by the divine airs 
of their own freedom, they have imag- 
ined that its strains, like those heard by 
the spirit in Comus, might create a soul 
under the ribs of death. Forgetting the 
ages through whose long night their 
fathers wrestled for this blessing, they 
have regarded an equal liberty, as the 
universal birth-rightof humanity. Hence, 
as they have witnessed nation after nation 
throwing off its old political bondage, 
and in the first transports of emotion, 
" shedding the grateful tears of new-born 
freedom" over the broken chains of ser- 
vitude, they have welcomed them into 
the glorious fellowship of republican 
States, with plaudit, and sympathy, and 
benediction. But, alas! the crimes which 
have been committed in the name of lib- 
erty, the social disorder and political 
convulsion which have attended its pro- 
gress, if they have not broken the power 
of its spells over the heart, have dispersed 
the illusions of our understanding. What 
has become of France, Italy, Greece, 
Mexico, Spanish America ? that stately 
fleet of freedom, whichwhen first launched 
upon the seas of time, with all its brave- 
ry on, was " courted by every wind that 
held it play." A part has be:n swal- 
lowed up in the gulfs of anarchy and 
despotism — the rest still float above the 
wave, but with rudder and anchor gone, 
stripped of every bellying sail and steady- 
ing spar, they only serve, 

■' Like ocean wrecks, to illuminate the 
storm." 

The melancholy experience of both 
hemispheres has compelled all but the 
projectors of revolution to acknowledge, 



In Slaveri/ Consistent with Natural Law f 



that the forms of liberty are valueless 
without its spirit, and that an attempt to 
. outstrip the march of Providence, by 
conferring it on a people unprepared for 
its enjoyments by habit, tradition, or 
character, is an indescribable fdly — 
■which instead of establishing peace, order, 
and justice, will be more likely to inau- 
gurate a reign of terror and crime in 
which civilization itself may perish. 

If the justice or fitness of slavery is 
to be determined, like other forms of in- 

. voluntary restraint, not by speculative 
abstractions, but by reference to its adap- 
tation to the wants and circumstances of 
the community in which it id established; 
and especially of the people over whom 
it is imposed, it only remains that we 
should apply these principles to the ques- 
tion of African Slavery in the United 
States. I shall not defend it as the only 
relation between the races, in which the 

\ superior can preserve the civilization that 
renders life dear and valuable. Tiiis 
proposition can indeed be demonstrated 
by plenary evidence, and it is sufficient 
by itself to acquit the slaveholder of all 
guilt in the eye of morals. But if the 
system could be vindicated upon no 
higher ground, every generous spirit 

J would grieve over the mournful necessity 
which rendered the degradation of the 
black man indispensable to the advance- 
ment of the white. Providence has con- 
demned us to no such cruel and unhappy 
f;\te. The relation in our society is de- 

i manded by the highest and most endu- 
ring interests of the slave, as well as the 
master. It exists and must be preserved 
for the benefit of both parties. Duty is 
indeed the tenure of the master's right. 
Upon him there rests a moral obligation 
to make such provision for the comfort 
of the slave, as after proper consideration 
of the burthens and casualties of the 
service, can be deemed a fair compensa- 
tion for his labour ; to allow every inno- 
cent gratification compatible with the 
steady, though mild discipline, as neces- 

li sary to the happiness as the value of the 
slave ; to furnish the means and facilities 
for religious instruction ; and to contri- 
bute, as far and fast as a proper regard 
to the public safety will permit, to his 



r 



general elevation and improvement. For 
oppression or injustice, allow me to say, 
I have no excuse to ofi'er. I am willing 
to accept the sentiment of the heathen 
philosopher, and to regard a man's treat- 
ment of his slaves as a test of his virtue. 
And whenever a slaveholder is found who 
so fiir forgets the sentiments of humanity, 
the feelings of the gentleman, and the 
principles of the Christian, as to abuse 
the authority which the law gives him 
over his slaves, I trust that a righteous 
and avenging public sentiment will pur- 
sue him with the scorn and degradation 
which attend the husband or father, 
who by cruel usage makes home intolera- 
ble to wife or child. 

Personal and political liberty are both 
requisite to develope the highest stjde of 
man. They furnish the amplest oppor- 
tunities for the exercise of that self-con- ^ 
trol which is the germ and essence of 
every virtue, and for that expansive and 
ameliorating culture by which our whole 
nature is exalted in the scale of being, 
and clothed with the grace, dignity and 
authority, becoming the lords of creation. 
Whenever the population of a State is 
homogeneous, although slavery may per- 
form some important functions in quick- 
ening the otherwise tardy processes of 
civilization, it ought to be regarded as a 
temporary and provisional relation. If 
there are no radical difi'erences of physi- 
cal organization or moral character, the 
barriers between classes are not insur- 
mountable. The discipline of education 
and liberal institutions, may raise the serf 
to the level of the baron. Against any 
artificial circumscription seeking to ar- 
rest that tendency to freedom which is 
the normal state of every society of 
equals, human nature would constantly 
rise in rebellion. But where two distinct 
races are collected upon the same terri- \r 
tory, incapable from any cause of fusion 
or severance, the one being as much su" 
perior to the other in strength and intel- 
ligence as the man to the child, there the 
rightful relation between them is that of 
authority upon the one side, and subor- 
dination in some form, upon the other. 
Equality, personal and political, could 
not be established without inflicting the 



Is Slavery Consistent with Natural Law ? 



climax of injustice upon the superior, 
and of cruelty on the inferior race: for 
if it were possible to preserve such an 
arrangement, it would wrest the scep- 
tre of doniiuion from the wisdom and 

'' strength of society, and surrender it to 
its weakness and folly. " Of all rights 
of man," says Carlyle, " the right of 
the ignorant man to be guided by the 
■wiser, to be gently and firmly held in the 
true course, is the indispensablest. Na- 
ture has ordained it from the first. So- 
ciety struggles towards perfection by con- 
forming to and accomplishing it, more 
and more. If freedom have any mean- 
ing, it means enjoyment of this right, in 
■which all other rights are enjoyed. It is 
a divine right and duty on both sides, 
and the sum of all social duties between 
the two." Under the circumstances I 
have supposed, no intelligent man could 
hesitate, except as to the form of subor- 

-i dination : nor has entire equality been 
ever allowed in society where the infe- 
rior race constituted an element of any 
magnitude. 

Personal servitude is generally the 
harshest and most objectionable form of 
restraint, exposing its subjects to an 
abuse of power involving greater sufier- 
ing than any other. But this is not an 
invariable law, even in a homogeneous 
society. The most recent researches into 
the condition of the labouring classes of 
Europe, the descendants of the emanci- 
pated serfs, have satisfied all candid in- 
quirers after truth that a large number 
have sunk below the level of their an- 
cient slavery, and would be thankful to 
belong to any master who would furnish 
them with food, clothing and shelter. 
But when we are settling the law of a 
society embracing in its bosom distinct 
and unequal races, the problem is com- 
plicated by elements which create the 
gravest doubt whether personal liberty 
will prove a blessing or a curse. It may 
become a question between the slavery, 
and the extinction or further deteriora- 
tion of the inferior race. Thus, if it is 
difficult to procure the means of subsis- 
tence from density of population or other 
cause, and if the inferior race is incapa- 
ble of sustaining a competition with the 



superior in the industrial pursuits of life, 
a condition of freedom which would in- 
volve such competition, must either ter- 
minate in its destruction, or consign it 
to hopeless degradation. If, under the.«e 
circumstances, a system of personal serv- 
itude gave reasonable assurance of pre- 
serving the inferior race, and gradually 
imparting to it the amelioration of a 
higher civilization, no Christian states- 
man could mistake the path of duty. 
Natural law, illuminated in its decision 
by History, Philosophy, and Religion^ 
w(juld not only clothe the relation with 
the sanction of justice, but lend to it the 
lustre, of mercy. It will not, I appre- 
hend, be difficult to show that all thes^o 
conditions apply to African slavery iii 
the United States. Look at the races 
which have been brought face to face in 
nnmanageable masses, upon this conti- 
nent, and it is impossible to mistake their 
relative position. The one still filling 
that humble and subordinate place, which 
as the pictured monuments of Egppt 
attest, it has occupied since the dawn of 
history ; a race which during the long- 
revolving cycles of intervening time has 
founded no empire, built no towered city, 
invented no art, discovered no truth, be- 
queathed no everlasting possession to the 
future, through law-giver, hero, bard, or 
benefactor of mankind : a race which, 
though lifted immeasurably above its na- 
tive barbarism by the refining influence 
of Christian servitude has yet given no 
signs of living and self-sustaining cul- 
ture. The other, a great composite race 
which has incorporated into its bosom all 
the vital elements of human progress; 
which, crowned with the traditions of his- 
tory and bearing in its hands the most 
precious trophies of civilization, still re- 
joices in the overflowing energy, the 
abounding strength, the unconquerablo 
will which have made it " the heir of all 
the ages ;" and which with aspirations un- 
satisfied by centuries of toil and achieve- 
ment, still vexes sea and land with its 
busy industry, binds coy nature faster in 
its chains, embellishes life more prodi- 
gally with its arts, kindles a wider 
inspiration from the fountain lights of 
freedom, follows knowledge 



Is Slavery Consistent with Natural Law f 



9 



"like a sinking star, 
Beyond the utmost bound of human 
thought,'' 

and pushing its unresting columns still 
further into the regions of eldest Night, 
in lands more remote than any over 
which Roman eagles ever flevr, " to the 
farthest verge of the green earth," plants 
the conquering banner of the Cross, 

"Encircling continents and oceans vast, 
In one humanity." 

It is impossible to believe that the su- 
premacy in which the Caucasian has 
towered over the African through all the 
past can be shaken, or that the black 
man can ever successfully dispute the 
preeminence with his white brother as 
members of the same community, in the 
arts and business of life. Could such 
races be mated with each other ? It is 
unnecessary to refer to Egypt or Central 
America, where a mongrel population, 
monumenta veneris nefandce, exhibit 
the deteriorating influence of a similar 
fusion. If there were no broad and in- 
delible dividing lines of colour and phys- 
ical organization to keep the black and 
white races apart, their respective tra- 
ditions, extremes of moral and intellec- 
tual advancement, and unequal aptitudes, 
if not capacities for higher civilization, 
separate them by an impassible gulf. 
That feeble remnant of our kindred, who, 
surrounded by hordes of barbarian?, yet 
linger among the deserted seats of West 
India civilization, may forget the dignity 
of Anglo-Saxon manhood, in the despair 
and poverty to which they have been re- 
duced by British injustice ; but we, 
" sprung of earth's first blood," and 
"foremost in the files of time," who un- 
der Providence are masters of our des- 
tiny, will never permit the generations 
of American history to be bound to- 
gether by links of shame. Is the de- 
portation of the African race practicable ? 
^ A more extravagant project was never 
seriously entertained by the human un- 
derstanding. There are economical con- 
siderations alone, which would render it 
utterly hopeless. The removal of our 



black population would create a gap in 
the industry of the world, which no white 
emigration could fill. It would bring 
over the general prosperity of the coun- 
try a blight and ruin, that would dry up v 
all the sources of revenue on which the 
success of the measure would depend. 
Its consequences would not terminate 
with this continent. The great wheel 
which moves the commerce and manu- 
factures of the world, would be arrested 
in its revolutions. General bankruptcy 
would follow a shock, besides which the 
accumulated financial crises of centuries 
would be unfelt. In the recklessness 
and despair of crime and famine thus 
induced, the ancient landmarks of em- 
pire might be disturbed, and all existing 
governments shaken to their foundation. 
No favourable inference can be drawn 
from the immense emigration, which, 
like the swell of a mighty sea, is pouring 
upon our shores. It comes from regions 
where population is too dense for sub- 
sistence, and where a vacant space is 
closed as soon as it is opened. It is im- 
pelled by double influences, neither of 
which can operate to any extent upon 
the American slave, want and wretch- 
edness at home, and all material and 
moral attractions abroad. It is compos- 
ed of men accustomed at least to personal 
freedom, and belonging to races en- 
dowed with far more energy and intelli- 
gence than the African. It is received 
into a community, whose strength and 
vitality enable it to absorb and assimilate 
a much larger foreign element than any 
of which history has any record. If the 
black man was able and willing to re- 
turn to his native land, he must carry 
with him the habits and feelings of the 
slave. Can it be supposed that such a 
living cloud, as the annual increase of 
our slaves, could discharge its contents 
into the bosom of any African society, 
without blighting in the license of their 
first emancipation from all restraint, 
whatever promise of civilization it might 
have held out ? 

If we must accept the permanent res- 
idence of this race upon our soil, as a 
providential arrangement beyond human 
control, it only remains to adjust the 



10 



Is Slavery Consistent with Natural Laio? 



form of its subordination. Should it em- 
brace personal, as well as political servi- 
tude ? Personal slavery surrounds the 
black man with a protection and saluta- 
ry control which his own reason and en- 
ergies are incapable of supplying, and 
by converting elements of destruction 
into sources of progress, promotes his 
physical comfort, his intellectual culture, 
and his moral amelioration. Emancipa- 
tion upon the other hand in any form, 
gradual or immediate, would either de- 
stroy the race through a wasting pro- 
cess of poverty, vice, and crime, or sink 
it into an irrecoverable deep of savage 
degradation. What Homer has said may 
be true, that a free man loses half his 
value the day he becomes a slave ; but 
it is quite as true, that the slave who is 
converted into a freeman, is more likely 
to lose the remaining half than to re- 
cover what is gone. There are no ra- 
tional grounds upon which we could an- 
ticipate for our slaves, an advancing civ- 
ilization if they were emancipated, or 
upon which we could expect them to 
preserve their contented temper, their 
material comfort, their industrious hab- 
its, and their general morality. The ne- 
gro has learned much in contact with 
the white man, but he is yet igno- 
rant of that great art which is the 
guardian of all acquisition, the art 
of self-government. The superiority of 
the white man in skill, energy, foresight, 
providence, aptitude for improvement, 
and control over the lower appetites and 
passions, would give him a decisive and 
fatal advantage in the pitiless competi- 
tion of life. The light which history 
sheds around this problem, is broad and 
unchanging. Wherever unequal races 
are brought together, unless reduced by 
despotism to an indiscriminate servitude, 
or mingled by a deteriorating and de- 
moralizingfusion, theinferior must choose 
between slavery and extinction. Upon 
these principles only can we explain the 
preservation of the Indian inhabitants 
of Spanish America, and the destruction 
of the aboriginal races which have cross- 
ed the path of English colonization. 
All the lower stages of civilization 
are characterized by an improvidence of 



the future and a predominance of the 
animal nature, which increase the force 
of temptation, and at the same time di- 
minish the power of resistance. Hence 
it is, that when an inferior race, anima- 
ted by the ^passions of the savage, but 
destitute of the restraining self-control 
which is developed by civilization, is 
brought in contact with a higher form of 
social existence, where the stimulants 
and facilities for sensual gratification are 
multiplied, and the consequences of ex- 
cess and improvidence are aggravated in 
fatality, it is mown down by a mortality 
more terrific than the widest waste of war. 
Private charity and the influence of 
Christianity upon individuals may retard 
the operation of these causes, but destruc- 
tion is only a question of time. With- 
out a judicious husbandry of the surplus 
proceeds of labour in the day of pros- 
perity to meet the demands of age, sick- 
ness and casualty, poverty alone with 
the disease, sufi"ering and crime that at- 
tend it, would wear out any labouring 
population. The remnant of the Indian 
tribes scattered along the lower banks of 
the St. Lawrence, present an impressive 
illustration of these simple political 
truths. They manifest, says Professor 
Bowen, sufficient industry when the re- 
ward of labour is immediate : but sur- 
rounded by an abundance of fertile and 
cleared land, where others would grow 
rich, they are rapidly perishing from im- 
providence alone. 

Even in England, in periods of man- 
ufacturing prosperity, when wages are 
high, the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
reckons with as much confidence upon 
the expenditure by the operatives of 
their surplus profits, in spirits, tobacco, 
and other hurtful stimulants, as upon the 
proceeds of the income tax. And if the 
working class of England, instead of be- 
ing constantly recruited from a higher or- 
der of society, consisted of an inferior race, 
the annual losses from intemperance and 
improvidence would soon carry it ofi". As 
population becomes denser, our free blacks 
are destined to exemplify the same great 
law. In the free States, where an en- 
croaching tide of white emigration is driv- 
ing them from one field of industry after an- 



Is Slavery Consistent icith Natural Law f 



11 



other, they already stand, as the statistics 
of population, disease and crime disclose, 
upon the narrowest isthmus which can 
divide life from death. AVhen we re- 
member that the destructive agencies 
which would be let loose amongst our 
slaves, by emancipation, are as fatal to 
morals as to life, and that the natural in- 
equality between the races would be in- 
creased by a constant accession of num- 
bers to the white through emigration, it 
is not extravagant to assert that extermina- 
ting massacre would involve a swifter, 
but scarcely more certain or more cruel 
death. 

If emancipation took place in a tropi- 
cal region, where climate forbade the 
competition of white labour, and the exu- 
berance of nature supplied the means 
of life without the necessity of intelli- 
gent and systematic industry, there are 
other causes which would remove from 
the slave every safeguard of progress, 
and render his relapse into barbarism 
inevitable. Civilization depends upon 
J activity, development, progress. It is 
measured by our wants and our work. 
Without indulging in any rash generali- 
zations, we may safely affirm, that where 
animal life can be sustained without la- 
bour, and an enervating climate invites 
to indolent repose, we cannot expect from 
that class of society upon whom in every 
country the cultivation of the soil de- 
pends, any industrious emulation. So 
powerful is the influence of these physi- 
cal causes over barbarous tribes, that 
under the torrid zone, as we are in- 
formed by Humboldt, where a beneficent 
hand has profusely scattered the seeds 
of abundance, indolent and improvident 
man experiences periodically a want of 
subsistence which is unfelt in the sterile 
regions of the North. As men increase 
in virtue and intelligence, they become 
more capable of resisting the operation of 
climate and other natural laws, but some 
form of slavery has been the only basis 
upon which civilization has yet rested in 
any tropical country. If it can be sus- 
tained upon any other, it must be by a 
race endowed with a larger fund of na- 
tive energy than the African, or quick- 
ened by the electric power of a higher 



culture than he has ever possessed. His 
moral and physical conformation pre- 
dispose him to indolence. Ccsclum tiqu 
anivium mutant, has been the law of his 
history. Under the Code Rural of Hayti, 
the harshest compulsion has been used to 
subdue the sloth of barbarism, and to 
compel the labour of the free black man, 
but in vain. In the British West In- 
dies, since emancipation, no expedients 
have proven effectual to conquer this re- 
pugnance to exertion. The English his- 
torian, Alison, who whatever may be his 
political sentiments, has no sympathies 
with slavery, in his last volume, thus de- 
scribes the result of the experiment. 
"But disastrous as the results of the p- 
change have been to British interests 
both at home and in the West Indies, 
they are as nothing to those which have 
ensued to the negroes themselves, both in 
their native seats and the Trans-Atlantic 
Colonies. The fatal gift of premature 
emancipation has proved as pernicious to 
a race as it always does to an individual: 
the boy of seventeen sent out into the 
world, has continued a boy, and does as 
other boys do. The diminution of the 
agricultural exported produce of the 
islands to less than a half, proves how 
much their industry has declined. The 
reduction of the consumption of their 
British produce and manufactures in a 
similar pftrportion, tells unequivocally 
how much their means of comfort and 
enjoyment have fallen off. Generally 
speaking, the incipient civilization of 
the negro has been arrested by his eman- 
cipation : with the cessation of forced 
labour, the habits which spring from 
and compensate it, have disappeared, and 
savage habits and pleasures have re- 
sumed their ascendency over the sable 
race. The attempts to instruct and civil- 
ize them have, for the most part, proved 
a failure; the dolce far niente equally 
dear to the unlettered savage as to the 
effeminate European, has resumed its 
sway ; and the emancipated Africans dis- 
persed in the woods, or in cabins erected 
amidst the ruined plantations, are fast 
relapsing into the state in which their 
ancestors were when first torn from their 
native seats by the rapacity of a Chris- 



12 



Is Slave?-}/ Consistent ivith Natural Law? 



tian avarice." A melancholy confirma- 
tion of this statement is furnished by a 
fact which I have learned from a reliable 
private source, that the prevailing crimes 
of this population have changed from 
petty larceny to felonies of the highest 
grades. But if the black race could 
escape barbarism, or defy those destroy- 
ing elements of society, poverty and 
crime, there is a more comprehensive 
political induction which establishes the 
justice and expediency of its subjection 
to servitude. If in any community there 
is an inferior race which is condemned 
by permanent and irresistible causes to 
occupy the condition of a working class, 
not as independent proprietors of the 
8oil they till, but as labourers for hire, 
then a system of personal slavery under 
which the welfare of the slave could be 
connected with the interest of the master, 
would be far preferable to the collective 
servitude of a degraded caste. This pro- 
position supposes the existence, not of 
an inferior class simply, but an inferior 
race — which, as such, is condemned by 
nature to wear the livery of servitude in 
some form — which can never be quick- 
ened or sustained by those animating 
prospects of wealth, dignity and power 
which, in a homogeneous community, 
pour a renovating stream of moral 
health through every vein and artery 
of social life — which must earn a scanty 
and precarious subsistence by a stern, un- 
intermitting and unequal struggle with 
selfish capital. Can any skepticism re- 
sist the conviction that, under such cir- 
cumstances, a social adjustment which 
would engage the selfish passions of the 
superior race to provide for the comfort 
of the inferior, must be an arrangement 
of mercy as well as of justice? Upon this 
question the experience of England is 
full of instruction. The abolition of 
slavery upon the continent of Europe 
gradually converted the original serfs 
into owners of the soil. In England, it 
terminated with personal manumission — 
leaving the villein to work as a labourer 
for wages, or to farm as a tenant upon 
lease. What has been the effect of this 
great social revolution? I do not refer to 
that saturnalia of poverty, misery, va- 



grancy, and crime which immediately 
followed the disruption of the old feudal 
bonds, and the adjustment of the new 
relations of lord and vassal, by the " cold 
justice of the laws of political economy." 
What is the present condition of the Eng- 
lish labourer? English writers, whose 
fidelity and accuracy are above suspicion, 
have almost exhausted the power of lan- 
guage in describing his abject wretched- 
ness and squalid misery. They have dis- 
tributed their population into the rich, 
the comfortable, the poor, and the perish- 
ing. That " bold peasantry, their coun- 
try's pride," has almost disappeared. 
Every improvement in an industrial 
process which diminishes the amount 
of human labour, brings with it more 
or less of suffering to the English opera- 
tive. Every scarce harvest, every fluc- 
tuation in trade, every financial crisis 
exposes him to beggary or starvation. 
In the selfish competition between the 
capitalist and workman, says a distin- 
guished christian philanthropist, " the 
capitalist, whether farmer, merchant, or 
manufacturer, plays the game, wins all 
the high stakes, takes the lion's share of 
the profits, and throws all the losses, 
involving pauperism and despair, upon 
the masses." Nothing can be more 
hopeless than the condition of the agri- 
cultural labourer. All the life of Eng- 
land, says Bowen in his lectures on Politi- 
cal Economy, "is in her commercial and 
manufacturing classes. Outside of the 
city walls, we are in the middle ages again. 
There are the nobles and the serfs, true 
castes, for nothing short of a miracle can 
elevate or depress one who is born a mem- 
ber of either." Moral and intellectual 
culture cannot be connected with physi- 
cal destitution and suffering. We are not 
therefore surprised to learn, from a recent 
British Quarterly, that there is an over- 
whelming class of outcasts at the bottom 
of their society whom the present system 
of popular education does not reach, who 
are below the influence of religious ordi- 
nances, and scarcely operated upon by any 
wholesome restraint of public opinion. 
For the relief of this wretchedness an 
immense pauper system has grown up, 
as grinding in its exactions upon the rich, 



Is Slavery Consistent with Natural Law? 



13 



as clemoralizlng in its bounties to the 
poor. But even this frij^htful evil ap- 
pears insignificant, in comparison with 
that embittered and widening feud be- 
tween the classes of society, which has 
filled the most sanguine friends of hu- 
man progress with the apprehension, that 
England's greatest danger may spring 
from the despair of her own children, the 
beggars who gaze in idleness and misery 
at her wealth, the savages who stand by 
the side of her civilization, and the 
heathen who have been nursed in the 
bosom of her Christianity. Tiie intelli- 
gent philanthropists of England, place 
their whole hope of remedy in plans 
of colonization — plans for substituting 
cooperative associations for the system of 
hired service — plans for increasing the 
number of peasant proprietors, and thus 
placing labour on a more independent 
basis — for educating the working class, 
and for legislation which will facilitate the 
circulation of capital, and the more equal 
distribution of property. But if this evil 
working in the heart of the nation be 
incurable, if the helotism of the working 
classes should prove, as it has already 
been pronounced, irretrievable, I am far 
from advocating a reduction of the Eng- 
lish labourer to slavery. There is no 
radical distinction of race, between the 
labourer and the capitalist. The latter 
owes his superiority, not to nature, but 
to the vantage ground of opportunity. 
Nature has implanted a consciousness of 
equality, so deeply in the bosom of the 
labourer, that personal slavery would 
bring with it a sense of degradation he 
could never endure. Whatever the gene- 
ral destitution and sufferings of his class, 
an undying hope will ever whisper to 
the individual that a happy fortune 
may raise him to comfortable indepen- 
dence, or social consideration. The very 
thought, that from his loins may spring 
some stately figure to tread, with dignity 
the shining eminences of life, is able to 
alleviate many hours of despondency. 
But above all, an instinctive love of 
liberty, such as was felt by the Spartan 
when he compared it to the sun, the most 
brilliant, and at the same time, the most 
useful object in creation, cherished in the 



Englishman by the traditions of centu- 
ries of struggle in its achievement and 
defence, cause him to echo the sentiment 
of his own poet, 

"Bondage is winter, darkness, death, des- 

pair, '^ 

Freedom, the sun, the sea, the mountains 
and the air." 

I fully subscribe to an opinion which 
has been expressed by an accomplished 
Southern writer, that an attempt to en- 
slave the English labourer would equal, 
though it could not exceed in folly, an 
attempt to liberate the American slave — 
either seriously attempted and with suffi- 
cient power to oppose the natural current 
of events would overwhelm the civiliza- 
tion of the continent in which it occurred 
in anarchy. But if the English labourer 
belonged to a different race from his em- 
ployer ; if they were separated by a moral 
and intellectual disparity such as divides 
the Southern slave from his master: if ^ 
instead of the sentiments and traditions 
of liberty which would make bondage 
worse than death, he had the gentle, tract- 
able and submissive temper that adapt 
the African to servitude, who can doubt 
that a slavery which would insure com- 
fort and kindness, would improve his con- 
dition in all its aspects ? 

None of the circumstances w))ich pre- 
vent the application of the general pro- 
position we have been discussing to the 
English labourer, extend to the American 
slave— none of the plans which have been 
suggested for the relief of the former 
would offer any hope of amelioration to 
the latter. No man who knows anything 
of the negro character, can for a moment '^ 
suppose that the land of the country, 
could be distributed between them as teu- 
ant proprietors. If it was given to them 
to day, their improvidence would make it 
the property of the white man tonmrrow. 
Indeed the fact to which Mr. Webster 
called attention, that the products of the 
slave-holding States are destined mainly, 
not for immediate consumption, but for 
purposes of manufacture and commercial 
exchange, exclude the possibility of an 
extended system of tenant proprietorship, 
and render cultivation and disposal by 



14 



Is Slavery Consistent with Natural Law? 



capital upon a large scale indispensable. 
The black man if emancipated must work 
for hire. Would he be better able to hold 
his own against the capitalist than the 
English labourer ? Would not the misery 
and degradation of the latter, but faintly 
foreshadow the doom of the emancipated 
Blave ? His days embittered and short- 
ened by privation ; cheered by no hope of 
a brighter future: the burthens of liber- 
ty without its privileges ; the degradation 
of bondage without its compensations ; 
"the name of freedom graven on a heav- 
ier chain ;" his root in the grave, the lib- 
erated negro under the influence of moral 
causes as irresistible as the laws of grav- 
ity, -would moulder earthward. What is 
thei-e, may I not ask, in the misery and 
desolation of this collective servitude, to 
compensate for the sympathy, kindness, 
comfort, and protection which so generally 
solace the suffering, and sweeten the toil, 
and make tranquil the slumber, and con- 
tented the spirits of the slave, whose lot 
has been cast in the sheltering bosom of 
a Southern home ? 

The approximation to equality in num- 
bers, which has been hastily supposed to 
render emancipation safer than in the 
West Indies, would give rise to our 
greatest danger. It will not be long be- 
fore the unmixed white population of the 
West Indies will be reduced, by the com- 
bined influences of emigration and amal- 
gamation, to a few factors in the sea 
ports. In the United States, not only 
would the exodus of either race, or their 
fusion, be impracticable, but the pride 
of civilization, which now stoops with 
alacrity to bind up the wounds of the 
slave, would spurn the aspiring contact 
of the free man. The points of sympa- 
thy between master and slave may not 
be as numerous or powerful as we could 
desire, but between the white and the 
black man, in any society in which they 
^ are recognised as equals, and in which 
the latter are sufficiently numerous to 
create apprehension as to the conse- 
quences of distrust and aversion, a grow- 
ing ill-will would deepen into irrecon- 
cilable animosity. Look at the isolation 
in which, notwithstanding their insignifi- 
cance as a class, the free blacks of the 



North now live. "The negro," says De 
Tocqueville, "is free, but he can share 
neither the rights, nor the pleasures, 
nor the labour, nor the affections, ^ 
nor the altar, nor the tomb of him 
whose equal he has been declared to 
be. lie meets the white man upon fair 
terms, neither in life nor in death." 
What could be expected from a down- 
trodden race, existing in masses large 
enough to be formidable, in whose bosoms 
the law itself nourished a sense of 
injustice by proclaiming an equality 
which Xature and society alike denied, 
with passions unrestrained by any stake 
in the public peace, or any bonds of at- 
tachment to the superior class, but that 
it should seek in some frenzy of despair, 
to shake off its doom of misery and deg- 
radation ? Would not the atrocities which 
have always distinguished a war of races, 
be perpetrated on a grander and more 
appalling scale than the world has ever 
yet witnessed ? The recollections of 
hereditary feud alone have, in every age, 
so inflamed the angry passions of our 
nature as to lend a deeper gloom even to 
the horrors of war. When the poet de- 
scribes the master of the lyre, as seeking 
to rouse the martial ardour of the Grecian 
conqueror and his attendant nobles, he 
brings before them the ghosts of their 
Grecian ancestors that were left unburied 
on the plains of Troy, who tossing their 
lighted torches — 

" Point to the Persian abodes, 
And glittering temples of their hostilegods."' 

But what would be the ferocity awakened 
in half-savage bosoms, when embittered 
memories of long-descended hate towards 
a superior race, exasperated by the mad- 
dening pangs of want, impelled them to 
seek retribution for centuries of imagi- 
nary wrong? Either that precious har- 
vest of civilization which has been slowly 
ripening under the toils of successive 
generations of our fathers, and the genial 
sunshine and refreshing showers of centu- 
ries of kindly Providence, would be 
gathered by the rude sons of spoil, or 
peace would return after a tragedy of 
crime and sorrow, with whose burthen of 



Is Slavery Consistent with Natural Law? 



15 



■woe the voice of history would be tremu- 
lous through long ages of after time. 

The whole reasoning of modern phi- 
lanthropy upon this subject has been 
vitiated, by its overlooking those funda- 
mental moral differences between the 
races, which constitute a far more im- 
portant element in the political arrange- 
ments of society, than relative intellec- 
tual power. It is immaterial how these 
differences have been created. Their ex- 
istence is certain ; and if capable of re- 
moval at all, they are yet likely to en- 
dure for such an indefinite period, that 
in the consideration of any practical pro- 
blem, we must regard them as permanent. 
The collective superiority of a race can 
no more exempt it from the obligations 
of justice and mercy, than the personal 
superiority of an individual ; but where 
unequal races are compelled to live to- 
gether, a sober and intelligent estimate 
of their several aptitudes and capacities 
must form the basis of their social and 
political organization. The intellectual 
weakness of the black man is not so 
characteristic, as the moral qualities which 
distinguish him from his white brother. 
The warmest friends of emancipation, 
amongst others the late Dr. Channing, 
have acknowledged that the civilization 
of the African, must present a different 
type from that of the Caucasian, and re- 
semble more the development of the 
East than the West. His nature is made 
1 up of the gentler elements. Docile, af- 
fectionate, light-hearted, facile to impres- 
sion, reverential, he is disposed to look 
without for strength and direction. In 
the courage that rises with danger, in the 
energy that would prove a consuming fire 
to its possessor, if it found no object upon 
which to spend its strength, in the proud 
aspiring temper which would render 
slavery intolerable, he is far inferior to 
other races. Hence, subordination is as 
congenial to his moral, as a warm latitude 
is to his physical nature. Freedom is not 
"chartered on his manly brow" as on 
that of the native Indian. Unkindness 
awakens resentment, but servitude alone 
carries no sense of degradation fatal to 
self respect. Acivili/.ation like our own 
could be developed only by a free people; 



but under a system of slavery to a superior 
race, which was ameliorated by the 
charities of our religion, the African is 
capable of making indefinite progress. 
He is not animated by that love if liberty 
which Bacon quaintly compar d to a 
spark that ever flieth in the facii of him 
who seeketh to trample it un cr foot. 
The masses of the old world, unt'er vari- 
ous forms of slavery, have exhibited a 
standing discontent, and their struggles 
for freedom have been the flashes of a 
smothered but deeply hidden fire. The 
obedience of the African, unless dis- 
turbed by some impulse from without, 
and to which he yields only in a vague 
hope of obtaining respite from labour, is 
willing and cheerful. De Toqqueville, iu 
his work on the French Revolution, points 
out a difference between nations, in what 
he calls the sublime taste for freedom — 
some seeking it for its material blessings 
only, others for its intrinsic attractions ; 
and adds, " that he who seeks freedom 
for anything else than freedom's self, is 
made to be a slave." How fallacious 
must be any political induction which 
transfers to the African that love of 
personal liberty, which wells from the 
heart of our own race in a spring-tide of 
passionate devotion, the winters of despot- 
ism could never chill. The Providence 
which appointed the Anglo-Saxon to 
lead the van of human progress fitted 
him for his mission, by preconfiguring 
his soul to the influences of freedom. 
This sentiment is indestructible in his 
nature. It would survive the degrada- 
tion of any form or term of bondage. Like 
the sea shell, when torn from its home in 
the deep, his heart, through all the ages 
of slavery, would be vocal with the music 
of his native liberty. 

The strength of that security against 
oppression which the Southern slave de- 
rives from the selfishness of human na- 
ture, has never been sufficiently appre- 
ciated, for in truth, it has existed in con- 
nection with no other form of servitude. 
With exceptions too slight to deserve re- 
mark, in Greece and Rome, in the Brit- 
ish and Spanish colonies, it was cheaper 
to buy slaves than to raise them, to work 
them to death, than to provide for them 



/ 



16 



Is Slavery Consistent witJi Natural Lato? 



in life. Hence in Rome, the slaves of the 
public were better cared for than those 
of the individual. With us, the master 
has a large and immediate interest, not 
only in the life, but the health, comfort 
and improvement of his slave, for they 
all add to his value and efficiency as a 
labourer. Southern slavery must there- 
fore be tried upon its own merits, and not 
by data true or false, collected from other 
forms of servitude. Arithmetic, Gibbon 
^ once said, is the natural enemy of rheto- 
ric, and a single statement vrill suffice to 
discredit all the reasoning, and pour con- 
tempt upon all the declamation which has 
confounded our slavery with that of the 
British West Indies. From the most re- 
liable calculations that can be made, says 
Carey, in his Essay on the Slave Trade, 
it appears that for every African import- 
ed into the United States, ten are now to 
be found, such has been the wonderful 
growth of population ; for every three 
imported into the British West Indies, 
only one now exists, such has been its 
frightful decline. But however ample 
this protection may be to the slave from 
the oppression of strangers, his own pas- 
sions it is urged, will lead the master to 
spurn the restraints of interest. But 
what security against an abuse of power, 
has human wisdom ever devised which is 
likely to operate with such uniform and 
prevailing force ? As Burke said of ano- 
ther social institution, " it makes our 
weakness subservient to our virtue, and 
grafts our benevolence, even upon our 
avarice." All the evidence v.hich is ac- 
cessible, the statistics of population, of 
consumption as shown both by im- 
ports, and the balance between production 
and exports, and the testimony of intel- 
ligent and candid travellers bear witness 
to its general efficiency. And it is to be 
remarked that whilst the slave partakes 
largely and immediately of his master's 
prosperity ; the reverses which reduce 
the latter to beggary or starvation, pass 
almost harmless over his head. In other 
countries, the pressure of every public 
calamity falls upon the working classes : 
but with us the slave is placed in a great 
measure beyond their reach, by the cir- 
cumstance that his hire or ownership im- 



port a condition of life in Avhich the means 
of subsistence are enjoyed. From the 
demoralization of extreme want, so fatal 
to virtue as well as happiness in other 
lands, he is thus always saved. It was 
the benevolent wish of Henr}' the Fourth 
of France, that every peasant in his do- 
minions might have a fowl in his pot for 
Sunday. In every age the patriot has of- 
fered a similar prayer for the labouring 
poor of his country. But it is only in the 
Southern States of our confederacy, that 
the sun ever beheld a meal of wholesome 
and abundant food, the daily reward of 
the children of toil. 

The relation is so far from having any 
tendency to provoke those angry and re- 
sentful feelings -which would excite the 
master to acts of cruelty, that its tendency 
is directly the reverse. 

It was truly said by Legare, that ^ar- 
cerc suhjedis, was not exclusively a Ro- 
man virtue: that it was a law of the 
heart, the usual attribute of undisputed 
power ; and that there were few men who 
did not feel the force of that beautiful 
and touching appeal: " Behold, behold, 
I am thy servant." It was owing to this 
principle that when the dependence of 
the feudal vassal upon his lord was most 
complete, their mutual attachment, (as 
we arc assured by Gilbert Stewart and 
other historians of this period,) was 
strongest, and as the feudal tenure decay- 
ed, and the law was interposed between 
them, the kindness upon one side and the 
affection and gratitude upon the other dis- 
appeared. It is not simply the conscious- 
ness of strength which tends to disarm 
resentment in the bosom of the master. It 
is the long and intimate association, con- 
nected with the feelings of interest awa- 
kened in all but the hardest hearts by 
the cares and responsibilities of guardi- 
anship which make the slave an object of 
friendly regard, and bring him within 
that circle of kindly sympathies which 
cluster around the domestic hearth. It 
is a form of that generous feeling which 
bound the Highland chieftain to hia 
clan, and which, with greater or less 
force, depending upon the virtue of the 
age, attaches to every relation of patri- 
archal authority. According to Dr. Ar- 



Is Slavery Consistent xoith Natural Law. 



17 



nold, (in his tract on the Social condition 
of the Operative Classes,) the old system 
of English slavery was far kinder than 
that now existing in England of hired 
service. The affection between the mas- 
ter and the villain is shown by the fact 
that villainage " wore out " by volunta- 
ry manumission — a circumstance which 
never would have happened had the rela- 
tion been one simply of profit and loss. 
Shakspeare in his character of old Adam, 
in "As You Like It," has adverted to the 
more genial and kindly elements which 
distinguished this legal service from that 
for wages. Orlando, in replying to the 
pressing entreaty of the old servant 
to go with him, and " do the service of a 
younger man in all his business and ne- 
cessities," says — 

" Oh good old man, how well in thee ap- 
pears 
The constant service of the antique world, 
When service sweat for duty — not for 
meed." 

The mutual good will of distinct classes 
has, in all ages, been dependent upon a 
well defined subordination. This opin- 
ion is confirmed by the testimony of one 
of the most eloquent writers of New Eng- 
land, in reference to the workings of its 
social system as they fell under his perso- 
nal observation. I appeal, says Dana in 
his Essay on Law as suited to Man, "to 
those who remember the state of our do- 
mestic relations, when the old Scriptural 
terms of master and servant were in 
use. I do not fear contradiction when I 
say there was more of mutual good will 
then than now ; more of trust on the 
one side and fidelity on the other ; more 
of protection and kind care, and more of 
gratitude and affectionate respect in re- 
turn ; and because each understood well 
his place, actually more of a certain free- 
dom, tempered by gentleness and by de- 
ference. From the very fact that the dis- 
tinction of classes was more marked, the 
bond between the individuals constitu- 
ting these two, was closer. As a general 
truth, I verily believe that, with the ex- 
ception of near-blood relationships, and 
here and there peculiar friendships, the 
attachment of master and servant was 
2 



closer and more enduring than that of 
almost any other connection in life. The 
young of this day, under a change of for- 
tune, will hardly live to see the eye of 
an old, faithful servant fill at their fall ; 
nor will the old domestic be longer 
housed and warmed by the fireside of 
his master's child, or be followed by him 
to the grave. The blessed sun of those 
good old days has gone down, it may 
be for ever, and it is very cold." It is 
through the operation of these kindly 
sentiments, which it awakens on both 
sides, that African slavery reconciles the 
antagonism of classes that has elsewhere 
reduced the highest statesmanship to the 
verge of despair, and becomes the great 
Peace-maker of our society, converting 
inequalities, which are sources of danger 
and discord in other lands, into pledges 
of reciprocal service, and bonds of mu- 
tual and intimate friendship. 

But a vigilant and restraining public 
opinion surrounds our slaves with a cu- 
mulative security. The master is no char- 
tered libertine. Custom, the greatest of 
law-givers, places visible metes and bounds 
upon his authority which few are so har- 
dy as to transcend. Native humanity 
and Christian principle inscribe their lim- 
itations upon the living tables of his heart. 
A public sentiment, growing in its strength 
and increasing in its exactions, covers the '' 
slave with a protecting shield, far less 
easily or frequently broken through, than 
those feeble barriers of law which in our 
Free States, are interposed between the 
degraded and outcast black man, and his 
white brother. Written laws never to be 
received as accurate exponents of the 
rights and privileges of a people, are 
most fallacious when appealed to as a 
standard, by which to determine the char- 
acter of a system of slavery ; for the wi- 
sest and most humane must acknowledge 
that the introduction of law may so dis- 
turb the harmony and good will of any 
domestic relation, as to breed more mis- 
chief than it can possibly cure. It is not 
simply in reference to the food, clothing, 
work, holydays, punishments of slaves, 
that public sentiment exercises its super- 
vision and restraint. It looks to the 
whole range of their happiness and im- 



18 



Is Slavery consistent with Natural Law ? 



provement. It is operating with great 
force in inducing masters to provide more 
extended facilities for their religious in- 
struction. It has to a large extent termi- 
nated that disruption of family ties, which 
,has always constituted the most serious 
obstacle to the improvement of the slave, 
and the severest hardship of his lot. A 

^ Scotch weaver, William Thompson, who 
travelled through our Southern States in 
1843, on foot, sustaining himself by man- 
ual labour, and mixing constantly with 
our slave population, states in a book 
which he published on his return home, 
that the separation of families did not 
take place here to such an extent as 
amongst the labouring poor of Scotland. 
"We know that the evil has been dimin- 
ishing with every succeeding day, and I 
trust that public sentiment will not leave 
this most beneficent work half done. The 
sanctity and integrity of the family union 
is the germ of all civilization. There is 
nothing in slavery to make its violation 
inevitable. It may require some time and 
sacrifice to accommodate the habits of so- 
ciety to the universal prevalence of a 
permanent tenure in these relations. But 
through the agency of public sentiment 
alone, acting upon buyer and seller, and 
operating where necessary through com- 
binations of benevolent neighbours, the 
mischief in its entire dimensions lies 
within the grasp of remedy. 

Slavery is charged with fixing a point 
in the scale of civilization, beyond which 
it does not permit the labourer to rise. 
God, it is argued, has conferred the capa- 
city and imposed the duty of improve- 
ment, but man forever denies the oppor- 
tunity. I admit that the refining, eleva- 
ting, and liberalizing influences of know- 

^ ledge can not be imparted to the slave, in 
an equal degree with his master. But 
this arises from the fact that he is a la- 
bourer, not that he is a slave. It proceeds 
from a combination of circumstances 
which human laws could not alter, and 
which render daily toil the unavoidable 
portion of the black man. Civilization is 
a complex result, demanding a multitude 
of special offices and functions, for whose 
performance men are fitted, and even 
reconciled by gradations in intelligence 



and culture. However exalting or enno- 
bling might be the knowledge of Newton 
or Herschell, God in his Providence has 
denied to the larger part of the human 
family, the opportunity of obtaining it. 
The apparent hardship of this arrange- 
ment disappears when we reflect that this 
life is only a school of discipline and pro- 
bation for another, and that a variety of 
condition involving distinct spheres of 
duty, may be the wisest and most merci- 
ful provision for each. Every age rises 
to a higher level of general intelligence, 
but the mass of men must be satisfied 
with that prime wisdom, " to know that 
before us lies in daily life." Whilst I 
doubt not that, 

" Through the ages one increasing purpose 

runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with 

the circuit of the suns," 

yet so long as the Divine ordinance, the 
poor ye have always with you, remains 
unrepealed — an ordinance without which 
the fruits of industry would be consumed, 
and its accumulations cease, the classes 
of society must be divided by a broad 
line of disparity in intellectual culture. 
Emancipation would not relieve the slave 
from the necessities of daily labour, or '' 
furnish the leisure for extended mental 
cultivation. There might be individual 
exceptions ; but all legislation must take 
its rule from the general course of human 
nature, not its accidental departures and 
variations. It is emancipation and not 
servitude, which would forever darken 
and extinguish those prospects of amelio- 
ration that now lie imaged in the bright 
perspective of Christian hope. The slave 
will partake more and more of the life- 
giving civilization of the master. As it 
is, his intimate relations with the supe- 
rior race, and the unsystematic instruc- 
tion he receives in the family, have placed 
him in pointof general intelligence above 
a large portion of the white labourers of 
Europe. It appears from the most recent 
statistics, that one half the adult popula- *'' 
tion of England and Wales are unable to 
write their names. It was of English 



Is Slavery consistent with Natural Law f 



19 



labourers, not American slaves, that Gray 
■Vfrote those touching lines — 

"But knowledge to their eyes her ample 
page, 

Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er un- 
roll ; 

Chill penury repressed their noble rage. 

And froze the genial current of the soul." 

But it is supposed that our slaves can 
never be instructed without danger to 
the public safety, as knowledge, like the 
admission of light into a subterranean 
mine, might lead to an explosion. There 
may be circumstances in which the su- 
preme law of self-preservation will com- 

■4 mand us to withhold from the slave the 
degree of information, we would gladly 
impart. But it is never to be forgotteo, 
that this stern and inexorable necessity 
will not be created by the system icself. 
The sin, and the responsibility of its exis- 
tence will lie at the door of the misjudg- 
ing philanthropy which has rashly and ig- 
norantly interposed to adjust relations on 
whose balance hang great issues of liber- 
ty and civilization. If the views which 
have been presented are true, the more 

V his reason was instructed, the clearer 
would be the slave's perception of the 
general equity of the arrangement which 
fixed his lot. But if knowledge is to in- 
troduce him to a literature which will 
confuse his understanding by its sophis- 
try, whilst it inflames his passions by its 
appeals, which will exaggerate his rights 
and magnify his wrongs, then mercy to 
the slave, as well as justice to society re- 
quire us to protect him from the folly and 
crime into which he might be hurried by 
the madness of moral intoxication. We 
will not throw open our gates, that the 
enemies of peace may sow the dragon's 
teeth of discord, and leave us to reap a 
harvest of confusion and rebellion — but 
•when they come to plant love amongst us, 
te teach apostolic precepts, as elementary 
morality, and to hold up the standard of 
Holy Scripture as the rule of conduct, 
and proof of law, we will give them hos- 
pitable welcome. 

If I have at all comprehended the ele- 
ments which should enter into the deter- 



mination of this momentous problem of 
social welfare and public authority, the 
existence of African Slavery amongst us, 
furnishes no just occasion for self-re- 
proach; much less for the presumptuous 
rebuke of our fellow man. As individu- 
als, we have cause to humble ourselves 
before God, for the imperfect discharge 
of our duties in this, and in every other 
.relation of life: but for its justice and 
morality as an element of our social pol- *^ 
ity, we may confidently appeal to those 
future ages, which, when the bedimming 
mists of passion and prejudice have van- 
ished, will examine it in the pure light of 
truch, and pronounce the final sentence 
of impartial History. Beyond our own 
borders, there has been no sober and in- 
telligent estimate of its distinctive fea- 
tures ; no just apprehension of the na- 
ture, extent and permanence of the dis- 
parities between the races, or of the fatal 
consequences to the slave, of a freedom 
which would expose him to the uncheck- 
ed selfishness of a superior civilization ; 
no conception approaching to the reality 
of the power which has been exerted by 
a public sentiment, springing from Chris- 
tian principle, and sustained by the uni- 
versal instincts of self-interest, in tem- 
pering the severity of its restraints, and 
impressing upon it the mild character of 
a patriarchal relation ; no rational antici- 
pation of the improvement of which the 
negro would be capable under our form of 
servitude, if those who now nurse the wild 
and mischievous dream of peaceful eman 
cipation, should lend all their energies to 
the maintenance of the only social system 
under which his progressive amelioration 
appears possible. African slavery is no y 
relic of barbarism to which we cling from 
the ascendency of semi-civilized tastes, 
habits, and principles; but an adjustment 
of the social and political relations of the 
races, consistent with the purest justice, 
commended by the highest expediency, 
and sanctioned by a comprehensive and 
enlightened humanity. It has no doubt 
been sometimes abused by the base and 
wicked passions of our fallen nature to 
purposes of cruelty and wrong ; but where 
is the school of civilization from which 
the stern and wholesome discipline of suf- 



20 



Is Slavery consistent with Natural Law f 



fering has been banished? or the human 
landscape not saddened by a dark-flowing 
stream of sorrow ? Its history when fair- 
"^ ly written, will be its ample vindication. 
It has weaned a race of savages from su- 
perstition and idolatry, imparted to them 
a general knowledge of the precepts of 
the true religion, implanted in their bo- 
soms sentiments of humanity and princi- 
ples of virtue, developed a taste for the 
arts and enjoyments of civilized life, 
given an unknown dignity and elevation 
to their type of physical, moral and intel- 
lectual man, and for the two centuries 
during which this humanizing process has 
taken place, made for their subsistence 
and comfort, a more bountiful provision, 
than was ever before enjoyed in any age 
or country of the world by a labouring 
class. If tried by the test which we ap- 
ply to other institutions, the whole sum 
of its results, there is no agency of civi- 
lization which has accomplished so much 
in the same time, for the happiness and 
advancement of our race. 

I am fully persuaded, Mr. President, 
that the preservation of our peace and 
"' union, our property and liberty depend 
upon the triumph of these opinions over 
the delusion and ignorance which have 
obscured and perplexed the public j udg- 
ment upon this question of slavery. I 
believe that they indicate the only tena- 
ble line of argument along which we can 
defend our rights or character. So long 
as men regard all forms of slavery as sin- 
ful, they will be conducted to the conclu- 
sion that any aid or comfort to them, is 
likewise sinful, by a logical necessity, 
which their passions or interests can only 
resist for a time. The conviction that 
justice is the highest expediency for the 
statesman, the first duty of the Christian, 
and should be the supreme law of the 
State, will sooner or later establish its 
supremacy over all combinations of par- 
ties and interests. So long as our fellow- 
citizens of the North look upon this rela- 
tion as barbarous and corrupting, they 
must and ought to desire and seek its ex- 
tinction, as a great vice and crime. Eve- 
ry year will deepen their sympathy with 
the slave, suifering under unjust bonds, 
and inflame their resentful indignation 



towards the master who holds his odious 
property with unrelaxing grasp. Mutual 
self-respect is the only term of association 
upon which either individuals or societies 
can or ought to live together. How 
long could our Union endure, if it was to 
be preserved by submission to a fixed pol- 
icy of injustice, and acquiescence under 
an accumulating burthen of reproach? 
We are willing to give much for Union. 
We will give territory for it ; the broad 
acres we have already surrendered would 
make an empire. We will give blood for 
it; we have shed it freely upon every 
field of our country's danger and renown. 
We will give love for it; the confiding, 
the forgiving, the overflowing love of 
brothers and freemen. But much as we 
value it, we will not purchase it at the 
price of liberty or character. A union 
of suspicion, aversion, injustice, in which 
we would be banned not blessed, outlaw- 
ed not protected, whether by faction un- 
der the forms of law or revolution over 
them I care not, has no charms for me. 
The Union I love, is that which our fa- 
thers formed ; a Union which, when it 
took its place upon the majestic theatre 
of history, consecrated by the benedic- 
tions of patriots and freemen, and covered 
all over with images of fame, was a fel- 
lowship of equal and fraternal States ; a 
Union which was established not only as 
a bond of strength, but as a pledge of 
justice and a sacrament of affection ; a 
Union which was intended like the arch 
of the heavens to embrace within the 
span of its beneficent influence all inter- 
ests and sections and to rest oppressively 
or unequally upon none ; a Union in 
which the North and the South— "like 
the double celled heart, at every full 
stroke," beat the pulses of a common 
liberty and a common glory. Mr. Madi- 
son has recorded a beautiful incident, 
which occurring as the members of the 
Federal Convention, were attaching their 
signatures to the Constitution, forms a 
fitting and significant close to its proceed- 
ings. Dr. Franklin pointing to the paint- 
ing of a sun which hung behind the 
speaker's chair, and adverting to a difii- 
culty which is said to exist in discrimi- 
nating between the picture of a rising 



Is Slavery consistent with Natural Law ? 



21 



and a setting sun, remarked t'lat during 
the progress of their deliberations, he had 
often looked at this painting and been 
doubtful as to its character, but that he 
now saw clearly it was a rising sun. 
When the fancy of Franklin gave to the 
painting its auroral hues, she had dipped 
her pencil in his heart. Let but a heal- 
ing conviction of the true character of 
our system of slavery enter into the pub- 
lic sentiment of the North ; let it under- 
^ stand that the South is seeking to dis- 
charge, not simply the obligations of jus- 
tice, but the larger debt of Christian hu- 
manity towards this degraded race ; and 
that if it has not accomplished moi'e, it 
is because its people like the workmen 
upon Solomon's temple, have been com- 
pelled to labour on their social fabric with 
the trowel in one hand, and the sword in 
the other : and the old feelings of mutual 
regard would soon follow a mutual respect 
resting upon immovable foundations; the 
animosities and dissensions of the Past 
would be buried in the duties of the Pre- 
sent and the Hopes of the Future; the mem- 
ories of our great heroic age would breathe 
over us a second spring of patriotism: the 
comprehensive Amei'icaa sentiment which 
framed this league of love would revive 
in all its quickening power, in the bosoms 
of our people, spreading undivided over 
every portion of our territory, and opera- 
ting unspent through all generations of 
our history ; the Union would be so clasp- 



ed in the North, and in the South, to our 
heart of hearts, that death itself could 
not tear loose the clinging tendrils of de- 
votion ; and that emblematic painting in 
which our fathers, with "no form nor 
feeling in their souls, unborrowed from 
their country," greeted with patriot 
prayer and hope, the rising beams of 
morning, would never by any line of les- 
sening light, betoken to the eyes of their 
children a parting radiance. 

I have an abiding faith in Time, Truth, 
and Providence. Let but the educated 
mind of our society be fully awakened 
to the magnitude of its responsibilities, 
and thoroughly instructed in the duties 
of its mission : let it meet the falsifica- 
tions of history, and perversions of phi- 
losophy, and corruptions of religion, iu 
the varied forms of wise and temperate 
discussion ; let it catch the spirit of Mil- 
ton, when he was content to lose his sight 
in writing for the defence of the liberties 
of England, and inspired by yet deeper 
enthusiasm in a cause upon which may 
depend the liberties and civilization of 
the whole earth, now in common peril 
from a universal licentiousness of opin- 
ion, unseal all its fountains of wit, elo- 
quence and logic ; and there would soon 
set out from our Southern coast, a great 
moral Gulf Stream, able to penetrate and 
warm all currents of opposing thought — 
although they come in the strength and 
volume of ocean tides. 



Note. — This Address at the time of its delivery had not been entirely committed to 
writing. The author has sometimes found it impossible to recall the exact language 
which was then employed. He has, also, after conference with some members of the 
Executive Committee of the State Agricultural Society, added an occasional statement 
and illustration, which the limits of the oral discourse obliged him to omit. 



/ 



sup. 

ties aL 

citizens 

tion as bi. 

must and ou^ 

tinction, as a g 

ry year will deei^ 

the slave, suffering 

and inflame their rt 



LIBRARY OF t-uwuKc^ 



011 899 895 ^ 



bcT D-'i. -.- 



